Biking Moms of Redwood City

This really hits home for me because my uncle is one of the cyclists on this ride.

Here's a blog written by one of the riders (and a former journalist) so you can follow the adventure.

I about died getting back from my ride yesterday. I think towing the boy and a big bag of cat food around in the middle of the day when it's 100 degrees is not the best idea. At least now I've suffered for my cause. And burned a lot of calories.

This morning on my training ride around Woodside, I encountered two different riders heading toward me in the bike lane. One called out "Sorry!" as I passed. Now, if you're sorry, why don't you just ride in the correct lane?!?

Last night was the second (I was sick and missed the first one a couple weeks ago) meeting of Redwood City's new bike-ped advisory committee (not sure it has an official name yet). As with any new body, we're still determining structure and specific goals. More later...

Half way through the month, I've already put 49 miles on my bike that would have gone on my car; just 10 less than all of last month! One more trip to the gym (13 miles round trip) and I'll have a new personal best!

Unfortunately, Whole Foods is very hard to bike to. It's at the corner of El Camino and Jefferson. Jefferson (between Marshall and Alameda) is the worst road for biking in Redwood City (second only to Woodside). It's necessary to take some round-about way to safely and effectively get there from anywhere.

In other news from my biking exploits yesterday: I was on my way to the gym and passing the Taco Hell in San Carlos on El Camino. Some chucklehead in a hatchback tapped his horn at me, then cut me off as he turned right in front of me to head towards the drive-through (as an aside, I have nothing against the drive-through now that I have a kid, but I'm pretty sure this guy did not have a kid with him). I cried out "hey!" to which he replied, "shut up!". So, the message here is, "I'm going to honk to let you know that if you don't yield I will run you over, crazy biking girl!" Grrr.

I did the 60k ride, which I think was just about perfect for my current level of fitness. As always, Western Wheelers did a great job. The route was incredibly well-marked, support was great, good food, etc. I'm amazed clubs are able to pull off events like this and only charge what they do.



Kathy likes the sound of this...

As you might be able to guess, my bike commuting petered out in the last week or so. I did do several errands on the bike (with Arthur in the trailer), but before that I was mostly doing errands with the hubby and going places like Ikea and Orchard Supply, with too much stuff for the trailer.

The good news is, I traveled 59 miles on my various errands this month. Assuming my car gets about 23 mpg, this means I save a whole two-and-a-half gallons of gas! According to the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Calculator, that's 63 pounds of greenhouse gases. Better than nothing. Now, if every family in Redwood City did the same thing...